Special Report

More permeable borders seem to make it more difficult for a nation to maintain a mixed economy, regulate capital in the public interest, provide decent wages, and foster a political coalition to defend all of the above. Indeed, there is an extensive conservative literature contending that the global market renders the role of the state […]

The news from Washington is filled with debates about safeguarding Americans’ Social Security, proposals to make tax cuts permanent, and sweeping federal budget reductions in a time of looming deficits. In the meantime, the 50 states, various territories, and close to 90,000 counties, cities, towns, and other local jurisdictions struggle with their own concrete budgetary […]

Promoting the healthy development of children is both an ethical imperative and a critical economic and social investment. A decent and wise society protects and nurtures all its children, particularly those disadvantaged early in life, so that they grow up to be productive adults, and because it’s the right thing to do. Public policy regarding […]

Remember those bumper stickers during the early-1990s fight over the Clinton health plan? “National Health Care? The Compassion of the IRS! The Efficiency of the Post Office! All at Pentagon Prices!” In American policy debates, it’s a fixed article of faith that the federal government is woefully bumbling and expensive in comparison with the well-oiled […]

Tom: You got dances, too? Caretaker: We got the best dances in the county every Saturday night. Tom: Say, who runs this place? Caretaker: The government. — The Grapes of Wrath, 1940 (screenplay by Nunnally Johnson) “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and […]

This year marks the centennial of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and it’s sobering to imagine how that exposé of working conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants might fare before the Bush administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the contemporary gatekeeper for proposed regulations. The lightly fictionalized novel’s most grisly passage showed workers slipping, falling, and […]

President Bush wants to “privatize” a portion of the Social Security program. As part of that debate, we should remember that our experience with 401(k) plans provides some evidence about how well such a program might work. The results to date are not encouraging and should serve as a blinking yellow light. 401(k) plans, which […]

President Bush has decided there’s a crisis within the Social Security system. Among the many ways in which his supporters justify the need for immediate action, there’s this one: Social Security is a bad deal for African Americans. It’s hard to miss the irony here. The same conservative coalition that has promoted racist federal judges, […]

Savings are low, debt is mounting, the dollar is weak, and the economy is projected to grow more slowly in this century than the last. But that’s not the half of it. What we really have to worry about, according to a chorus of prophets, is the prospect of Americans living too long. This failure […]

The most profound, and profoundly disturbing, innovation in budget policy during the administration of George W. Bush has been to discard the old-fashioned notion that presidents who propose a tax cut or new spending should also propose some way to pay for it. That practice, apparently, is just soooo 20th century. Observers of this administration’s […]